It's been referred to as the "greatest browser that no one uses." Opera, which has been a forerunner on several browser fronts, including its status as the first browser with tabs, took another step towards its next incarnation today, with version 10 becoming available as a public beta. The software is available now from Opera's Web site. The browser incorporates Opera Turbo, a service that can speed up slow internet connections by compressing Web content stored on Opera's servers.

The refreshed browser also sports an updated, dark interface, and its tabs can be dragged down to reveal thumbnails of the sites they representa very slick, new trick, though Windows 7 does something similar with its new taskbar previews. The Speed Dial that appears on blank new tabs offering a grid of favorite sites is now customizable for larger screens. Incidentally, Google "borrowed" heavily from this feature for its Chrome browser. You can now change the Opera Speed Dial's grid size for smaller, larger, or widescreen screens, and use your own photos as background.

"Your Web browser is the most important piece of software you will ever use," says Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera Software. "We think Opera 10 will redefine how you can enjoy the Web. We have more surprises on the way, but when you try the features, enjoy the accelerated performance and get a glimpse at our shiny new wrapping, I think Opera 10 beta will excite both long-time users and those new to Opera."

Opera remains the only browser to include a built-in BitTorrent client. Apparently, other browser makers are concerned about the copyright infringement potential of the protocol, though several extensions for Firefox can accomplish the same goal.

In other interface topics, Opera uses a dropdown of address predictions similar to Firefox's much-touted "Awesome Bar" that works well and has a neat, unique button to size the browser to a page, though this didn't always work as expected in my test sites. It also has the best sidebar of any browser, giving access to bookmarks, history, downloads, gadgets, notes, and more. And we cannot forget the "paste and go" right-click option in the address baralso copied by Google's Chrome.

Speed and Compatibility
A lean 6.5MB installer gets you started, and setup is over in a flash, though it's hard to top Chrome's speed of installation. The most heralded speed feature in the new browser, Opera Turbo, has been available as a separate update, but is now built into the browser. Simply click a speedometer icon in the lower-left corner of the browser window, and you've enabled it. In my test, the speedometer indicated a 2x performance improvement.

Even without Turbo, the browser is more than 40 percent faster than Opera 9.6, the current released version, according to its makers. Look for a full-on speed evaluation from me later when the browser's finally released.

Opera and Safari are the only popular browsers that fully pass the Acid3 "standards" test. (I put that in quotation marks because much of what Acid tests is not ratified by the W3C standards body.) Performance on this test doesn't always translate to real-world site compatibility. This is due as much to the sites' testing for and only running in Windows Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3. Yahoo Mail, which has been known to throw up warnings for unfamiliar browsers, works fine with the new Opera, but the Omniture site-traffic tool balks. Citibank's site had no problem when I logged in using Opera, nor did Fidelity's 401K site. PCMag.com has some problems in Opera, sometimes not loading pages and displaying buttons in the wrong place.

Related

Opera lags the new JavaScript speed leader, Chrome, by a considerable margin, and at just under 8,000ms on the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark on my test 2 GHz dual-core Athlon with 2GB RAM, it's shockingly in Microsoft Internet Explorer territory. That browser came in at 9,065ms, while Google Chrome tears through the test in 1,503ms. But, of course, feature-wise, Chrome is at the other end of the spectrum from Opera, lacking many tools users have come to expect such as an RSS reader and sidebar for search, feeds, and history.

Opera has deservedly attracted an avid, loyal cadre of followers, who will be mostly pleased by the new release. But the browser has yielded one of its historical advantagesspeedto Chrome, and it still has trouble displaying some sites, no doubt the sites' fault; nevertheless, most users just want the browser to get out of the way and work. For convenient features, Opera can't be beat, and dial-up users will welcome its Turbo service.

Michael Muchmore is PC Magazine’s lead analyst for software and Web applications. A native New Yorker, he has at various times headed up PC Magazine’s coverage of Web development, enterprise software, and display technologies. Michael cowrote one of the first overviews of Web Services (pretty much the progenitor of Web 2.0) for a general audience. Before that he worked on PC Magazine’s Solutions section, which in those days covered programming techniques as well as tips on using popular office software. Most recently he covered Web...
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